Catholic Reading Wednesday

With many thanks to our awesome curator, Karen Celano, you can delve into a faith-related news article each Wednesday! Karen writes:

George Saunders' touching 2013 commencement speech at Syracuse University examines success not in terms of career, academic achievements, material gain, or fame, but instead asks graduates to question their success and failures in terms of their kindness towards others.  Looking back on his own life, he reflects that failures of kindness are what he regrets the most - not necessarily active acts of unkindness, but the reserved, mild, and cowardly way in which most of us respond to the uncomfortable presence of suffering in our midst.  He urges graduates to combat the narcissism and selfishness of our culture and to "err on the side of kindness" as much as they can.

His speech is here.

Saunders' speech is powerful on its own.  Adding a Christian theological perspective can, I think, add to its insightfulness.  From a Christian perspective, Saunders provides an apt diagnosis of original sin, which he describes as a built-in condition of confusion and sickness.  He says that selfishness stems from believing that we are the center of the universe, that we are separable from others, and that we are "permanent" and eternal.  Christians know that only one Being fulfills these qualities: God.  Yet our God, who is the eternal center of the universe, chose not to remain separate from His creation and instead chose to empty Himself, to become one with us, and to suffer with and for His beloved creatures.  To be "like God," for Christians, is not license for egotism and narcissism; it is, rather, a command to selflessness and self-giving love, so that Saunders' wish for his audience can be fulfilled: "YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE."  For Christians, we learn to love by learning what God has done for us and by heeding His call to follow His Way of the Cross.

Saunders also provides a needed reminder that love is not defined by a sensation of good-will.  It is primarily a matter of action and will.  C.S. Lewis wrote in The Four Loves that we should not "waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor.  Act as if you did. . .  When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."  What is more, love is not a "sensible" or "mild" or "reserved" affair.  It is radical and subversive.  And, in the end, love reveals to us what we were always meant to be.  Love is about clearing away the extraneous and uncovering the "luminous" being God created us to be - creatures made in His Image.  

Where Saunders' speech can really be deepened by Christian theology is the way in which Christian thought extends mere human kindness and puts it in the context of divine love.  Placing Saunders' words in dialogue with Peter Kreeft's analysis of Christian agape (found here) reveals the difference between secular understandings of "love" and a Christian understanding of agape.  Kreeft writes that kindness has to do with the desire to alleviate suffering, and that, too, is Saunders' definition.  But what Saunders does not examine in his speech is the reality that kindness is not the same as love.  Love does not merely seek an end to suffering.  It seeks the absolute good of another - and it recognizes that sometimes suffering is necessary for our good. And here, I think, we can see the root of many of Christianity's disputes with secular society on issues ranging from abortion to assisted suicide.  Saunders says we should err on the side of kindness; Christians choose to err on the side of love.